Liquid drain systems have existed in various forms since perhaps the beginning of time, the most common system in use today probably involving the drain of excess rain water, for example, into large diameter catch basins used to drain rain water from city streets.
In the U.S. Pat. No. 3,715,958 to David D. Crawford et al, a preformed manhole body is described and illustrated as having a large bodied catch basin 2 purposely made with a larger diameter than the diameter of the sewer pipe, to enable its use as a basin having notched openings 10 which fit over a sewer pipe 18. As can be seen in FIGS. 7-11, the diameter of the catch basin 2 is several times larger than the diameter of sewer pipe 58. The device is not used, however, to drain fluids from the earth's surface, but rather is used as an apparatus to allow sewage from pipes 18 and 58 to be fed into the sewage pipes 1 and 41, respectively.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,948,931 to C. J. Mears also describes a catch basin (see FIG. 9) separating the inlet pipe 16 from the outlet pipe 17.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,729,165, a catch basin is illustrated as having a much larger diameter than the diameter of pipeline 44.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,938,285 to Agnar Gilbu is yet another example of a prior art manhole system using a larger diameter catch basin having cutouts 22 adapted to fit over a pipe or sewer line (FIG. 3).
Other examples of prior art drain systems and components of such systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,645,372; 4,882,882; 4,127,990; 4,123,034; 3,860,214; 3,788,080; 3,695,153; 3,562,969; 3,436,051; 3,212,519; 3,136,024; 2,730,785; 2,650,411; 1,814,738; 1,720,503; 1,120,478 and 1,087,366.
Each of the foregoing prior art patents suffers from one or more shortcomings in failing to address a need for a drain system using small, portable, lightweight components which can be tapped into a drain pipe without the need for providing any additional support under the drain pipe, and which requires no severance or interruption of the drain pipe, and which forms the drain hole in the drain pipe before the other component or components are secured and sealed in place on the drain pipe.